Record covers

• Every record has a cover image that is stored locally in the /storage/covers directory
• As you may have noticed, there is no cover column in the records table
• The name of the image refers to the record's mb_id column
  E.g. if the mb_id value is f0a4ed57-10e0-4c37-81b4-36311dc7d4b6, the cover image must be f0a4ed57-10e0-4c37-81b4-36311dc7d4b6.jpg
• Later on in the course, we discuss some scripts to upload, replace and delete cover images
• To start using the covers, we prepared a small script to download a zip file containing all the covers and store them locally in the right folder

Create a symlink to the storage directory

• If you followed all the instructions when starting up our project, the symlink should already be created
• If not, you can create it by running the following command in your terminal: php artisan storage:link

link already exists

• If you execute the php artisan storage:link more than once, you get the following error:
• You can ignore this error, as the link was already created during the initial startup of the project

Download the covers

REMARKS

• The script we prepared is written in "pure PHP" and does not use much of the Laravel framework, therefore we will not discuss this code in detail
• Because this script is only used to speed up the development process, we will not add it to the navigation menu
• Later on, you can re-run this script every time you need to reset to the default covers

• Create a new file download_covers.blade.php inside the resources/views/admin directory
• Create a route to the download_covers page in routes/web.php

• Add a new route to the admin section in routes/web.php

Route::prefix('admin')->name('admin.')->group(function () {
    Route::redirect('/', '/admin/records');
    Route::get('records', function (){...})->name('records');
    Route::view('download_covers', 'admin.download_covers')->name('download_covers');   
});

• Run the script by opening the url http://vinyl_shop.test/admin/download_covers in your browser
• Because of the symlink, the covers will be visible in the storage/app/public/covers directory and in the public/storage/covers directory
  
• Open the url http://vinyl_shop.test/storage/covers/f0a4ed57-10e0-4c37-81b4-36311dc7d4b6.jpg to check one of the covers

covers folder not visible

• It might be possible that the covers folder doesn't appear in PhpStorm.
• Try to right-click the storage/app/public folder and choose Reload from Disk to force your working directory to refresh